Are they learning?

Are they learning?

Rich Lowry notes that The New York Times has run two positive Iraq pieces in the last two days. Heaven help us.

I noted the same phenomenon last Thursday on National Public Radio. I heard two stories in a row about the Iraq War and neither had any negative slant whatsoever. One report profiled workers at an armor producing factory in Indiana, and the other concerned a 58-year-old former soldier who re-enlisted in the Army. I was nonplussed as I listened to both stories waiting for the anti-war slant. Good journalism.

Sometimes it isn’t appropriate to dig up an opposing angle for a story. I’ll give the same concession to a report about a mother who doesn’t agree with the war grieving over her son killed in Iraq. No need to dig up a contrary point of view, the story is the mother. (Just a hypothetical case.) To achieve objectivity we need a mixture of both kinds of reports. Kudos to NPR for providing some balance.

Perhaps the recent coverage from the NY Times and NPR represent a renewed effort to appear less biased.

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Matt J. Duffy, PhD, is an academic media scholar. His works have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Middle East Media, the Journal of Mass Media Ethics and the Newspaper Research Journal. An assistant professor of communication, Duffy teaches UAE and international media law at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. He is an active member of AUSACE, the Arab-US Association for Communication Educators. Follow him on Twitter.

About the Author

Dr. Matt J. Duffy serves as an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Media at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, USA. He enjoys teaching the art of good journalism, a noble profession and powerful tool for social change. Duffy worked as a journalist for several news outlets including the Boston Herald and the Marietta Daily Journal. He now teaches journalism and media law.
Duffy's research focuses on international approaches to media law. Wolters Kluwer will publish the second edition of his"Media Laws in the United Arab Emirates" in 2017. He has published more than a dozen academic articles and writes occasionally for niche publications. Duffy enjoyed a visit to Pakistan in May 2016 as part of the Fulbright Scholar program from the US State Department. Since 2012, Duffy has served on the board of the Arab-United States Association for Communication Educators, an organization that aims to improve journalism in the Middle East. He also owns Oxford Editing that he started in 2007.